


Third Adventure: Love

by crookedcig



Series: How to Drive a Genius Mad in a Single Simple Step [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 16:07:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedcig/pseuds/crookedcig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A choose-your-own-adventure style story for the Sherlock Series 3 mini-bang (http://sherlockminibang.tumblr.com/). Each story is told in three parts and you can chose your own combination of angst, romance, or non-romantic fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part the First: Sauntering Vaguely Downwards

[ ](http://cuttleflesh.tumblr.com/)

The strange colloquialism “falling in love” had never quite sat right with Greg.  It felt like you had no choice in the matter, like it was an accidental trip instead of an adult, intentional thing that often took more effort than the storybooks would ever tell you.  He liked recognizing the work it took to stay in love, especially after his divorce.  Love was hard and sometimes painful.  And it deserved far more than falling into one another.

That didn’t much matter to the friends of the world’s only consulting detective (deceased).  There were days after his Fall that it felt like they were all falling and falling with no real end in sight, and that was rather scary.  Molly was falling into silence and Mrs H was falling into knitting and John was falling into Mary which was good but didn’t keep their ears as warm as Mrs H’s new past time did.

Somewhere along the way, without really realizing it had happened, Greg Lestrade fell into Mycroft Holmes and then they fell together, much to the chagrin of both.

It started when the elder Holmes found a stash of Greg’s stolen possessions in his brother’s things, after John Watson had moved out of 221b but none of them were ready to let go of the flat yet.  Lestrade had arrived at his office to retrieve four warrant cards, two sets of cuffs, three mobile phones he’d thought completely lost to the ages, and one wedding ring that really he hadn’t minded not having any longer.  Finding Mycroft Holmes with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up had been nearly enough to give the poor DI a heart attack.  Sure, he was only bare from the neck up and the elbow down, but on Mycroft that looked rather...exposed.  Nearly vulnerable, all things considered.

It had continued with a pint at a pub not too far away, when Greg had asked Mycroft to step away for a moment because they could both do with a drink and Mycroft had agreed, surprising them both.  Leaving the jacket off and the sleeves rolled up had been an intentional thing, and one that Greg much appreciated, all things considered.

It had deepened when Mycroft had murmured his thanks for all the things small and great that Lestrade had done for the younger Holmes over the seven years before his descent.  Deepened further when Mycroft had gone to get them another beer and had returned to the table with his hair mussed and what might have been a smile on his face if he’d let it stretch it’s legs.  They’d nursed their beers then, and Greg had learned that it had been twenty one years, six months, two weeks, and seventeen days since anyone had asked Mycroft for a pint.  Despite his guess, that hadn’t been university at all because of course Mycroft had finished with his higher education at 22 with three degrees and was already in Her Majesty’s employ by the time he’d last been pursued and invited for a drink.  Which had revealed also that Mycroft was 14 when he’d first been sent off to school, leaving the younger Holmes alone with distant but well meaning parents at just seven years old.  Suddenly, some of the rows he’d witnessed, the abuse that Mycroft had suffered at his little brother’s hands over the years and particularly when the other man was in rehab, made a bit more sense.  He’d spent the last forty years trying to make up for the fact that his brother believed he’d been abandoned.

It started all over again in a completely different way with Mycroft on his knees and Greg pressed against the back of his own front door, eyes wide and shocked as he watched the most dangerous man in the world suck him off.  Most definitely not heterosexual.  Later, in the darkness before Anthea called and reminded Mycroft of a meeting, the younger man shared a term coined by a jealous and mean-spirited schoolmate that suddenly put both his and John’s relationships with the brilliant, infuriating men of his family into a perspective that made sense: Holmes-osexuality.  The startling and disorienting sexuality that left previously straight men and gay women infatuated with decidedly more sexual than they seemed Holmeses.

Despite himself, Greg found that this new understanding of his orientation was not so alarming as he might have thought.  John thought it was hilarious, until it occurred to him what it meant for his own heart.

 

* * *

 

Want to continue on to chapter 2 with more romantic fluff? Go [here](../2231890).

Want to continue on to chapter 2 with platonic fluff? Go [here](../../../1108445/chapters/2230957).

Want to continue on to chapter 2 with angst? Go [here](../../../1108431/chapters/2230922).


	2. Life, the Universe, and Everything

Greg became Gregory, over the course of just weeks.  No one but his mother had ever called him that, and only in a fit, but hearing Mycroft say his name slowly, catching it against his teeth as if he was savoring the taste of it, changed his mind somewhat about the whole thing.

Mycroft became My, and Gregory always said it like he meant it, like the first half of the word “mine” and he’d just gotten too distracted to finish it up.

They had sex for the first time in Mycroft’s strangely spartan home, on a chesterfield likely older than the both of them in his home office.  Greg didn’t even get his trousers all the way off and Mycroft didn’t give him a cuddle afterwards because if he’d stuck around dinner was going to burn and “you don’t savage paella like that, Gregory.”  Greg quickly learned that Mycroft had just as much of a thing for food as his brother did for cocaine and (thankfully) that he’d schooled himself into moderation, unlike the younger Holmes.  That didn’t keep him from showering Greg with a first-real-date meal that would have seduced him out of his trousers...if that hadn’t already happened while dinner was in the stove.

Over dessert, which was chocolate hazelnut mousse with blood orange sorbet and mint leaves, Mycroft proved that he could be just as much of a prat by deducing that Greg was a Chelsea fan who’d not been to see a match in ages, and that he’d been a bit of a punk in his younger days, glued up mohawk and everything.  When Mycroft tried to explain just how he’d been able to tell (“Simple, Gregory, you still hook your thumbs in your pockets as if you expect your belt to have studs in it.”) Greg had kissed him until he was quiet again.  It was a bit like pulling teeth to get Mycroft to admit he was a Manchester man, and that he watched matches on one of the big TVs hidden in his office much to Anthea’s distaste.  Greg found himself offering to get them tickets, but only if Mycroft would let him shower there after because getting Manchester stink off him was going to take more than the paltry water pressure in his flat would be able to supply.

They snogged on the steps when they couldn’t quite keep their hands off each other long enough to get upstairs, and had sex again once they made it to a bed, but slower this time now that they had a chance.  

Greg learned that despite all appearances, Mycroft was not a morning person.  He required at least fifteen minutes of yoga and either a quick run or a session on some sort of torture device that he called a rowing machine before he would even allow anyone to speak with him, regardless of what kind of spoon was in their mouth when they were born.  Mycroft learned that Greg was a much simpler man and only required coffee and the slap of cold water on his face in order to rouse himself.  They both discovered together that Anthea was much better at coffee than either of them, and she was obliging enough to make it each morning when she arrived with her employer’s files and schedule for the day.  She never did tell them that the secret was nutmeg and cinnamon.

They protected one another, soothed each other’s ragged edges.  Greg tried not to resent it when Mycroft pulled him back from cases deemed too dangerous without consulting him.  Failed, but the attempt was admirable.  He waited eight weeks to ask about the scars that dotted Mycroft’s frame, the bullet holes and burns and things that he wouldn’t have expected under all that wool and linen.  They still had surprises for each other, it seemed.  And when Greg discovered that Mycroft and Anthea were both better shots than he, he didn’t ask any questions at all, just raised his brows in admiration, grinning, and waited for them to tell him on their own time.

The Home Office provided far more extensive training than he’d expected.

Slowly and by degrees, they fell into and onto one another until it was difficult to tell where the one ended and the other began, gravitational pull yanking two stars together as they tried to fill the sucking black hole that the younger Holmes had left behind.  John and Molly and Mrs H and Mary had their own orbits but they stayed close, eventually coming to Mycroft’s for dinner, much to his chagrin.  The second Christmas after his little brother had lept earthward, hosting a dinner for the man’s nearest and dearest hadn’t seemed to be a possibility.  But there he was, with an ugly hand-knit hat from Mrs Hudson, one of Greg’s hands in his and the other full with a glass of wassail.

The thought that he might be happy did not occur to him until it struck Mycroft at nearly the speed a body hits pavement.

 

* * *

 

Want to continue on to chapter 3 with romantic fluff? Go [here](../2231892/).

Want to continue on to chapter 3 with angst? Go [here](../../../1108431/chapters/2230923).

Want to continue on to chapter 3 with platonic fluff? Go [here](../../../1108445/chapters/2231807).


	3. Part the Third: He Loved Big Brother

They were in bed, when it happened.  Greg was awake and Mycroft was asleep, both of them naked and sated.  It had been a very good weekend indeed, the minor government official pulling some strings to get them each a few days off at the same time and driving them out to the Holmes’s “country cottage” in an aging green MG with the top down.  The convertible suited both their mood and the weather, which was unseasonably warm.

When Mycroft got a text, he didn’t check the phone.  Only person that would text Mycroft’s phone besides him was Anthea, and it would wait until the other man woke up.  When four more texts arrived in quick succession, Greg frowned and nudged his lover with his foot.  “Phone.”

The next fifteen minutes was a bit of a blur.  Mycroft had shoved himself up and grabbed the mobile.  Then he’d gone pale, paler than usual anyway, and just...disappeared.  My, Greg’s My, retreated somewhere behind Ice Man eyes and a steely expression and the denims and cashmere jumper on the floor were forgotten in favor of a suit that Greg hadn’t even realized was packed.  Questions went unanswered, Greg’s frantic hands tugging at Mycroft’s shoulders, his own fingers, trying to understand what it was the other man was so distraught about, what it was that had happened.  Just before Mycroft got into the car, leaving Greg and their bags to be picked up hours later by one of the impersonal drivers that never said a word no matter how much they swallowed each other’s moans in the backseat, there was a single word that left them both aching and hollow again, the black hole between them collapsing them in.

“Sherlock.”

It was two days before he got the text.

[NOT DEAD. MYCROFT’S SORTING IT FOR ME. WILL NEED CASES SOON, TERRIBLY BORED. --SH]

Prat.  Greg didn’t respond, but tried Mycroft and got no answer of his own.

He’d never had keys to the house in Belgravia.  Someone had always been there when he’d arrived, security or one of the drivers or Anthea or Mycroft himself.  He’d never needed keys before.  After a single rageful pounding on the big door, making a scene that he knew neither of the Holmeses would appreciate at all though Sherlock would delight in Mycroft’s discomfort, he walked away from six months of his life feeling emptier than when he’d signed the divorce pages eighteen months previous.

Anthea texted, now and then.  Let him know that they were both alive, the idiots.

John took him for pints.

Mrs H made him gloves and, in teaching Molly how to knit, earned him a very lopsided scarf.

He spent his birthday alone, drinking scotch Mycroft had given him the year before and feeling sorry for himself.

He spent the next day feeling stupid.

And the day after that, online setting up dating profiles because he refused to do that again.

It was a month before he found the box that had been shoved deep into his coat pocket, where it had hidden in the warm weather.  It was a plain thing, steel and heavy, set with a band of teak.  But he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood when he saw the ring sitting there in the little velvet box where Mycroft had clearly intended for him to find it that weekend, before...Sherlock.

Dressed only in a pair of jeans, his feet and head bare and anger yanking his face down into a scowl, DI Gregory Lestrade stormed onto the street, looking like a madman as he stared up at the nearest CCTV camera and shoved the ring onto his finger.  It fit perfectly, of course, which felt good but not quite as triumphant as he did when he turned around and slammed back into his flat.

The sleek black car was only five minutes in coming.  Mycroft and Greg were only another ten, but to be honest neither of them cared over much.  Slow was for men with smaller hearts and lesser minds than them.  Slow was for men who hadn’t survived the Fall and then falling.  They had the rest of their lives to be slow, if they wanted.

 

* * *

 

Want to chose a new adventure? Go [here](../../../../series/66248)!


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